Home	Vallejo Race April 30, 2022

The Great Vallejo Race 2022

(Commodore Egan's log from Kapai, followed by pics and video links from Luna Sea.) Congratulations to Rich Shoenhair and his crew on Windwalker for scoring first place division finishes both up and back to Vallejo. I briefly saw the stern of Windwalker at the windward mark on Saturday and never saw her again! Nice work! But I get ahead of myself…

For those outside of the San Francisco racing scene, The Great Vallejo Race is an annual 20 mile jaunt from SF Bay, past the Brothers Islands, at Point San Pablo, into San Pablo Bay, turning left into Mare Island Strait with a finish just short of the Vallejo Yacht Club. There is a return race the next day. Racers raft up and party on Saturday at gracious host Vallejo Yacht Club.

This race was the 122th year of the running with 117 boats participating. As of a few weeks ago only two Islanders were signed up; Kerry Scott's Cali and peripatetic Dan Knox's Luna Sea. Dan put out a challenge to the fleet that any Islander that showed up in Vallejo would receive a nice bottle of Champagne. I had an early morning obligation at home on Sunday and had decided that Kapai would miss the race this year but Dan's infectious enthusiasm, to say nothing of a free drink!) carried the day. We signed up for the Saturday race only, with a plan to take the 7:40PM ferry from Vallejo back to SF. My son Bryce and his girlfriend Reanne joined me for the race.

Windwalker signed up in the interim so we had 4 Islanders on the starting line Saturday morning. There was around 15 knots of wind at the start and as we beat up to the windward mark I saw both Windwalker, Luna Sea and Cali make the turn to toward Vallejo. At that point we lost sight of Windwalker but saw Luna Sea head to the right side of the course along the Richmond shore where they, (in Dan's words) prematurely raised the kite. Cali chose the left side of the course toward Angel Island and Kapai found good pressure in the middle of the course. A couple of miles south of Red Rock the wind died completely. We sloshed around for an hour, watched Luna Sea finally drop her kite over by Richmond and even saw Cali do a 360 over near Angel Island. After about an hour of drifting the wind kicked in and we had nice downwind sail to Vallejo with some gusts hitting 30 knots as we sailed up the Mare Island Channel to the finish. All in all a pretty typical spring day in these parts.

The impact of drifting conditions and spotty wind is evident in the large differences in finish times for the four Islander 36s.

Sail	Boat	Skipper	Rating	Finish Time	Corrected Time	Fin. Pos.
57307	Windwalker	Richard Shoenhair	144	03:01:58	02:50:26	22
420	Luna Sea	Dan Knox	144	03:22:02	03:09:13	72
438	Kapai	Richard Egan	147	03:56:34	03:40:37	92
38124	Cali	Kerry Scott	147	04:04:40	03:49:09	94

We tied Kapai up at the guest dock at Vallejo Municipal and went in search of Luna Sea over at the yacht club docks.



After traversing a dozen rafted boats we found Dan entertaining at least 15 people on Luna Sea and joined the fun. Dan is a man of his word and as soon as he saw us he produced a nicely chilled bottle of Chandon which we popped and shared with an already well lubricated group of happy sailors. Thank you Dan!



Vallejo Yacht Club puts on a good dinner and party and I had occasion to join a couple of crew members from Cali for some BBQ ribs. Kerry Scott, owner of Cali, is preparing to race in the Pacific Cup to Hawaii and his crew is super stoked to be a part of this. After dinner they led me to where Cali was tied up so I could say hi to Kerry and complain about the wind hole south of Red Rock. We had a good laugh about the 360 and headed to the ferry returning Monday morning for a solo delivery back to South Beach Harbor our home port.



Windwalker and Luna Sea raced back on Sunday in dramatically lighter winds. Windwalker taking a second first place finish. Fun weekend. We'll do it again next year and you should too!

Rick Egan
Kapai
I-36 Commodore




Pics and video links from Luna Sea. Click to enlarge.

Going Fast ...

Up San Pablo Bay

Napa River Bridge

Off Vallejo YC

1. The trip up to the Vallejo: The Great Vallejo Race 2022 - To Vallejo - 1 of 11 You Tube
2. The trip back part 1: The Great Vallejo Race 2022 Back from Vallejo Parkt - 1 of 8 - YouTube
3. The trip back part 2: The Great VAllejo RAce 2022 Back from Vallejo Part 2 - 1 of 9 - YouTube